Babysitting
by MegumiRaeda
Summary: Ed's in a rage, only to find Roy drunk on the job. What could have possibly distressed the Colonel so much to lead him to get drunk? We do not own FMA.....CURRENTLY ON HOLD
1. Window

Chapter 1

Edward Elric was furious. He had received orders to come to Central and report to Roy, which meant he'd had to drag his brother with him for fear of what would happen if he were left alone for as long as it might take to satisfy the bastard Colonel.

"Big brother! Calm down!" Al called from behind him. Only then did he realize that he's been storming down the hall, scaring off any military personnel unlucky enough to cross his path. He stopped, waiting for Alphonse to catch up. They turned the corner together and stopped. Halfway down this hall was the door to Roy's office. Riza and Hughes seemed to be peering in through a crack in the slightly open door. Sneaking up behind them, the Elric brothers poked their way in to look. Seeing the events occurring inside, Ed almost wished he hadn't. It was sickening!

A small chuckle escaped the room as Roy kicked off again, sending his chair into a wildly spinning cyclone of motion. His arms and legs stuck out at odd angles as though he were a child on a rollercoaster. He had the most idiotic look on his face, a mixture of pure joy and the sour expression that was often a sign of motion sickness.

Riza seemed to sigh at her need to take care of Mustang as though he really was a small, troublesome child. Drawing herself up, she snuck into the room while Roy continued that incessant spinning. Ed could see her fingering her gun, but then she seemed to change her mind. Instead, she pushed the chair over to the open window and, before Roy had a chance to complain or get up, upended the chair, sending Roy out the window into the street three stories below.

Riza turned to find that the others were now staring at her as an awkward silence crept across the room. Then Ed grinned and began to applaud her. The corners of her mouth twitched up in a smile of her own.

"Now then, to work!"

Ten minutes later, Ed sat on the edge of the Colonel's desk, waiting for him to get back (if he even could, for that matter). Al stood nearby talking softly to Riza about the-Gate-only-knows-what. The others were going about their usual business when the door to the office slammed open. Fearing the worst, some (including Breda and Havoc) ducked under their desks for cover. But the open door revealed Major Armstrong. He was carrying what seemed to be the Colonel, but…_Is he_ drunk Ed wondered.

"I was walking in this morning when something was dropped on me from a third story window." He stepped into the room as he said this and offered the Colonel to Riza. "I believe _you_ are in charge of…this?"

Riza sighed and pointed to the chair she had emptied out the window.

"Just put him there."

Armstrong gently placed Roy in the chair and left the room, presumably to explain to whomever he had to report to why he was late. Shaking her head, Riza turned to Roy, who was slouching so badly that he was about to slip out of the chair and onto the floor. With a firm grip on his arms, Riza held him up in the chair and thought for a moment.

"Ed, go get me some duct tape."


	2. Stairs

**Disclaimer: **We do not own FMA

Chapter 2

By the time Ed got back to the office, Roy was hallucinating. Staring wide-eyed as Roy had a conversation with an invisible officer, Ed handed the large roll of duct-tape to Riza.

"Thanks, Ed! Al would you mind holding him? My arms are getting tired."

Riza moved aside as Al took up the role of holding Roy in his chair. Riza began unrolling the tape with an almost homicidal type of grin. When Riza finished, the drunk colonel had…a lot (Ed lost count a t 20) of layers of duct-tape holding him to the chair. She also had duct-taped his arms to the arms of the chair, after duct-taping his hands shut. Ed wondered why she'd do such a thing when he noticed large scorch marks all over the office. _Hmm...were those there before?_ Ed thought about it for a split second. _Oh._

"So…uh, what know?" Ed asked. He'd dealt with a lot more than most teenagers his age, but he'd never found a handbook on care of drunk military officers.

"Well, you boys can go; I'll take care of him." Ed wasn't sure he liked the vengeful look in the first lieutenant's eye, but he got his brother and left. As they walked down a hallway on the first floor, he heard the slightest whining from somewhere behind him.

"AL! I TOLD YOU NO MORE CATS!"

"But-" Al didn't have time to respond, the aforementioned animal had escaped, running down the hall top speed until its striped tail disappeared around the corner. Ed didn't even glance at his brother before taking off after the furry annoyance. He cornered the kitten at the base of a stairway that came from the top floor in the building. He picked it up just as Al came puffing into view.

"Big bro-" Ed silenced him with a hand. _What was that noise?_ It sounded almost like a wheelie office chair falling down the stairs to his left. Ed visibly paled and slowly looked up the stairs.

"Whee!" The Colonel squealed like a small child. Ed barley managed a strangled scream before the Colonel crashed head long into him.


	3. Truffles

Chapter 3--"Truffles"

Riza was finally getting to work not that she had rid herself of the drunken Colonel for the second time that morning when the door seemed to explode inward on its hinges. Ed stood there, a crazy look in his eye. He held in his hands a quivering ball of fur that had sunk claws into his shirt and was holding on for dear life. Riza noticed the beginnings of bruises and a trickle of blood slid down the left side of his face from a source above his hairline. In short, it looked as though someone had dropped a piano on him…or a drunken military officer duct-taped to a chair.

_Shit! _Riza thought as Ed advanced into the room. Meanwhile, Al wheeled Roy into the room. He looked rather beat up as well. Riza looked around for help. Breda looked like he was about to go into hiding beneath his desk and Havoc was already there. Hughes stood in the corner, somehow looking amused and scared at the same time. Riza made a mental note to come up with some unspeakable torture for them before returning to the problem at hand. By now, Ed was a shade of red she had never seen before, at least not on a person's face.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!" Ed screamed, his face turning even redder.

"Uh…I tried to dispose of him."

"WELL, NEXT TIME, DUMP HIM ON SOMEONE ELSE!"

Riza was lucky, he seemed to be done. Instead, he was focusing on trying to remove the frightened fur ball from his shirt. But extricating its claws from the black fabric seemed to be a job and a half. Riza walked to Roy's desk and began rummaging through the drawers.

"What are you doing _now_?" Ed asked, looking up from his task.

"Maybe if we get some truffles in him, it'll sober him a bit."

"Good idea, I'd help, but I'm kind of busy."

Riza nodded her understanding and continued her search. _Damn him!_ she thought. _He keeps moving them around!_ Finally, she reached the last drawer, the bottom one on the right. It was already open a crack and when she opened it, she knew why.

"Holy shit!" Riza exclaimed, her eyes widening. Breda and Havoc poked their heads out from their hiding places, questioning looks poised upon their faces. Ed and Al looked up as Hughes looked over. When he saw the contents of the open drawer, he paled a dozen shades in under two seconds, a new record.

"Pickle!" Roy shouted drunkenly from his chair. Al had begun carefully removing the duct tape that held him in place and several yards of it trailed on the floor. Now he began struggling against his bonds, whimpering. The only coherent words Ed could make out were "mine" and "gimme". He stopped soon enough, and once again silence reigned.

"What's wrong?" Ed asked, looking over their shoulders. He gasped. The drawer was full of empty beer bottles, half a dozen at least. Finally Riza bent over and, moving beer bottles aside, fished out Roy's box of truffles. Shaking her head, she went over to Roy and began trying to convince him to eat the offered chocolate.


	4. Trouble

**Author's Note:** Ok guys, the humor at Roy's expense is over, but hopefully you guys will still like it. I'm going to add an actual plot to this now and we'll just see where it takes us.

Chapter 4: Trouble

By the time Roy was finally sober (and done complaining about his hangover), Ed was beginning to wonder why he had been drunk in the first place. It honestly didn't seem like something that he would do.

_Not that I'm complementing him or anything_, Ed thought_. It's just that normally; Roy takes his job pretty seriously._

Deciding to get an answer, he walked over to where Roy was sitting with an icepack on his head.

"So, any explanation for this, or do you always get drunk before coming to work" Ed looked thoughtful. "Actually, that would explain a lot."

Roy just rolled his eyes, but when Riza walked up, looking rather curious, he had no choice. Unfortunately, he seemed to have lost his voice.

"War," he managed to croak, and then cleared his voice. "I stayed late last night and when I was on my way out, I heard the Fuhrer talking with someone. The bastard wants to conquer Ishbal and make it part of us. If they won't cooperate, then he plans to wipe them off the face of the earth entirely." Roy stopped to clear his voice again. "I came back here to think about what I'd heard over a drink, but apparently it ended up being more that one."

Everyone in the room paled visibly. Ed knew the older officers had some pretty bad memories of the previous war on Ishbal, but he had hoped such experiences would remain with that generation. Now it seemed he'd get his first taste of war at age 15.

"Is there any way," Hughes asked, "that they weren't serious?"

"No, they were already setting the date and place of the first battle by the time I left."

Suddenly, Ed was enraged. "We have to stop them!"

"How?" Roy's voice still sounded rougher than usual. "How do you think a handful of people could stop an army?"

"Well," Ed started thinking out loud. "There are technically two ways to go: high or low. We could go through authority to stop them, but I'm not hopeful as to the luck we'd have there. Or, we could try to stop the army itself."

"Attack our own men? It's treason!" Roy exclaimed, but Ed took no notice.

"If we were careful, used stealth and wit, then not only could we possibly get away unseen, but we could pull it off! Roy, where and when were they planning the first battle?"

"You're crazy!" Roy yelled.

"It is crazy," said Hughes. "But it just might work."


End file.
